Slide Scanning – Slide Storage Tips

What are the shelf life of slides? Like everything else, you take care of it, it will take care of you.
The slides customers bring here to scan range from 10 to 50 years old. We’ve seen slides in all kinds of condition: Warped, wrinkled, taped-up, mouldy.

The best way to store slides in special designed slide containers. The most common is slide carousels or slide boxes.
Slides that come into our store in carousels – unless they have been stored in damp basements – are sturdy, sharp corners, not warped.

The condition of the slides affects the scanning quality and speed.
Although we use a dedicated Nikon 5000 CoolScan slide scanner, warped slides cause jams in this delicate equipment. Mouldy slides need to be wiped and cleaned with special Kodak cleaners – that adds cost to your slide scanning bill.

The only better alternative to storing your slides in specially designed slide container is…. to Digitize them. No matter how well you store your slides, environmental factors and time will cause them to fade eventually. The colors won’t be as vibrant, little white spots start appearing … When you digitize them, not only do you preserve that degradation, it makes it so much easier for you to share your slides: email them, create a photobook, print the digitized slide image at your local CVS or Walgreens. Share the memories – it does nothing for the slide to lie hidden in some dark closet – even if it’s carefully stored in a slide carousel.